 April 15, 2014 - 2:16pm | The Frontier Explorer has some art available for use involving what might be either cryo chambers or cloning chambers http://ariel-x.deviantart.com/art/Guardian-437094867 http://ariel-x.deviantart.com/art/Exodus-Orion-435956190 http://ariel-x.deviantart.com/art/Second-Age-Chamber-435298983 http://ariel-x.deviantart.com/art/What-ever-became-of-John-Kelly-358622814 http://ariel-x.deviantart.com/art/Can-you-keep-a-secret-199818534 I'm only just now starting to wrap my head around ideas and figured the community would have a few they might toss out. What sorts of articles could or should we do involving cryo sleep, cold storage on a passenger liner, or cloning? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 15, 2014 - 2:23pm | One idea that has resonated with me is that a ship with cold storage berths for passengers miss jumps and has other bad things happen such that the berth eventually powers down and the occupant awakens to an empty ship and a mystery. Perhaps there is a robotic brain somewhat in charge on the ship or not. Can the PC survive and unravel the mysteries surrounding what has happened? this could be written up as an adventure or a solo pick you path endless quest adventure like the Albatross adventure a few issues back. Also you go into cold sleep for the journey and what happens to your luggage? Rifled thru by the crew? do you lock it in a locker and hope the local technitian fails all his skill checks to pick the lock during the journey? how is your stuff secured and can you be sure its still there when you wake up? I once hypothisized that the sathar could have a passenger liner where they have a secret chamber that lets them wake a cold sleep passenger, hypnotize them, turn them into an agent with orders to forget the events in the secret chamber and thus 100s of new agents are seeded across the frontier. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 April 15, 2014 - 3:47pm | The scary story would be the PCs wake up on a ship where the sathar are processing and maybe even torturing the sleeping passangers into compliance. They have to sneak around, keep their escape unknown, save the ship, passengers, and crew, and figure out who is already under sathar control. NPCs and even themselves may turn on others or fail to respond as they fight their own mental battles. -iggy |
April 15, 2014 - 4:04pm | @iggy: you just reminded me of an idea- that the PCs starting an adventure freshly woke up to find things not as they should be is the SF analog to the PCs starting as slaves on a slave galley. Need to dig out the Dragon article and review cloning for SF and consider possibilities. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 April 15, 2014 - 6:20pm | Actually I was thinking the opposite. Why do we put our spacers in WWII submarine bunks? They are in space where the chance of waking up to a decompressed ship is a very real possibility. Now I am not talking cryosleep beds for off duty but open air? A small enclosed space or one that can enclose itself with enough air to give the spacer time to put on a suit and leave their bed space to effect repairs, fight off the pirates, hunt down the sabotaur or man the guns and shoot down the Sathar Frigate. All of which makes more sense than dying when a micrometeor penetrates the hull. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
April 15, 2014 - 7:49pm | Good point rattraveller. I have always overlooked the fact that waking up from cryo and finding that the space outside your chamber is now a vacume is now a death sentence. Welcome to your coffin. Time to rethink cryo chamber design. -iggy |
April 15, 2014 - 7:52pm | I remember the Captains cabin in On Baslisk Station self sealed so that it did not decompress with the rest of the ship. The captain then suited up before opening her cabin and getting to work commanding her ship through the fight. -iggy |
 April 16, 2014 - 12:51am | What about this scenario? The players start out with characters who just awaken from glass berths. They are naked and suffering from amnesia. No one is their to greet them or tell them what's going on. Hell, they don't know if they are in a base or on a ship. But they are not alone, and whatever is out their... is slowly trying to kill them off. They learn how to use gear and weapons they find along the way, with old skills manifesting when the time is right. This is not some Alien-inspired Star Frontiers scenario... It was a trippy-ass Gamma World/Mutant Future game I ran, where the players thought they were playing Sleepers, while they were actually playing Replicants. At first, they thought they were on a spaceship, but they found the outside but it was full of dinosaurs. Eventually, they eventually found out that their "world" wast just a giant dome and assumed they where on the Warden -- the generational starship form Metamorphosis Alpha, but it was just a large domed enviroment on Earth... An Earth that was built-up into a massive Dyson shell. (yeah, halfway through that, even M.Night Shyamalan was crying out "Cut back on the twists, dude!) I did not have the chance to end it properly, so the campaign was cut short with a joke ending where the whole world was in a small snow globe with the eyes of God in the form of an autistic child staring back at them. (The point were the party is being spat on by giant "one-eyed wiggle worms", you know the campaign is loosing steam fast.) |
April 16, 2014 - 5:03am | @Malcadon: so if we pretend that we're the staff at a RPG company that just got handed this project how would we go about writing the modules? I'm feeling that each "module" would constitute a set up that 1) convinces the players that things are one way while in fact they are the other way. 2) the obstacles in the module are really about preventing the characters from learning the truth. Note the difference in wording in point 1 the players are who are convinced of something but in point 2 its the characters that have road blocks to belief thrown in their face as there will be a dawning realization to the players that things are not as they seem 3) climax of the module is one of the big twists BTW i love the joke ending of the world being in a snow globe with the eyes of god looking down being the eyes of an autistic child, inspired that was I think. Of course in this PC world we'd have to drop the specification of autistic and just make it a child. @rattraveller: what if the sathar have turned the ships medical officer but he's fighting the voices (and eyes) in his head and has managed to hold onto a shred of himself and wakes up all of the cold sleepers. the PCs wake to him looking like he's in bad withdrawl from hvy duty drugs then he tries to kill them. This leaves them a mystery to begin to unravel- What was up with him? What's going on? etc. This might be time for a HS15 or HS20 passenger liner almost a star ship warden experience for SF- ei a massive dungeon crawl through the ship. sort of a Moldvay B4 "Lost City" module with a massive map and multiple factions in play. Perhaps not suitable for the magazine but I kind of like it. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 16, 2014 - 5:57am | @Malcadon: so if we pretend that we're the staff at a RPG company that just got handed this project how would we go about writing the modules? It would have lots of spelling errors, gratuitous nudity, and the story and concepts would be a jumbled mess. 
BTW i love the joke ending of the world being in a snow globe with the eyes of god looking down being the eyes of an autistic child, inspired that was I think. Of course in this PC world we'd have to drop the specification of autistic and just make it a child. Yeah, not everyone at the table got the joke ether. 
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 April 16, 2014 - 6:19am | I have a Poesque short story I wrote a while back involving a cryo-chamber. I don't know if I still have it, but if I do, I guess I can submit it. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
April 16, 2014 - 7:03am | Why would specification of "autistic" be non-PC? As long as it is not put in a derogatory light, there should be nothing lacking PC in the mention. Autism is often seen as a special power these days. Though even the specification of "mentally handicapped" should not be seen as lacking PC as long as no special emphasis or humor is given to the child's lack of mental faculty. It can be presented as ironic or deep. It's a matter of the language used. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
April 16, 2014 - 7:01am | The only problem I see with the "waking up from cryosleep with no memory" type of adventure is that it only really works with 1st level characters since it is a little hard to convince higher levels they have forgotten everything they know. For a little twist you could just have the characters wake up from a normal sleep and find their cabin door has been locked. Once they get it open they find a mess, crew is gone or dead, ship has been partially disabled/destroyed, trails of slime/blood lead off in random directions, why were no alarms sounded, where did everyone go, are there any other passengers locked in their cabins.... you take it from there. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
April 16, 2014 - 9:19am | To do the clone thing you tell the players that you want to play a prequel and they need to roll make up their zero level characters. Then the GM must make a progression list for how each clone character has skills manifest and when. The actuall characters could even be brought in as the final reveal that they are clones. -iggy |
April 16, 2014 - 12:14pm | Autism could be PC because you never know when someone will take offense at something that had no intention of being offensive but since they're offended that automatically makes you a racists or an insensitive prick. I tend to get away with more then the next white person since my wife and step son have skin of color. I do try to be mind full of sensibilities and of PC stupidity though. I liked the austic child's role as god in Malcadon's example , it was inspired. The PC comment was not meant with more than a little tongue in cheek I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 16, 2014 - 1:14pm | I have a Poesque short story I wrote a while back involving a cryo-chamber. I don't know if I still have it, but if I do, I guess I can submit it. this was actually the reason for the word Trolling in the title, to see what ideas people had or if anyone had something that could be turned into an article for the the zine. So if you do have it then by all means submit it. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 16, 2014 - 1:25pm | This idea is a bit gruesome: PCs were in cold storage on a ship that misjumps and fails to return to charted space. supplies are limited on the ship so the crew decides to not wake the sleeper passengers. Efforts were made to fix problems but not all of them effective. People began to panic and irrational decisions were made. then supplies began running out and survivors turned to the "custom of the sea" or canniblism to eat. when someone realized that they had a deck load of "frozen dinners". they starte waking one of the cold sleepers at a time and eating them. At about the time that the first PC is on the menu and about to be roused from cold sleep more and more systems on the ship are beginning to fail and something happens to wake all of the cold sleepers at once. Only one cannible is present in the compartment when this happens so he try to bluff the PCs as to whats going on and seek to get reinforcements. Plenty of evidence that all is not right in the universe to be seen like lots of brown spots on the clothing of the cannible, curious brown stains on the floor and piles of ripped, cut and torn clothing in the corners plus the cannible is acting weird. and if they look into one other cold sleep chamber there are cuts of meat being kept on ice. The game begins with the PCs in the clothing but no equipment. Basically a Crash on Volturnus start with even less equipment. Now go. In fact you could use this as a crash on volturnus start with the ship hiding from observation by the pirates on the back side of the planet Ankor. Players wont know they are in Zebulon system so you can play up the crazy mystery side of things for awhile till its obvious to veteran SF players that this was a unique start for Crash on Volturnus. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 17, 2014 - 4:31am | The Walking Dead sorta ended that way. Of course they needed some other clues since the cannibals seemed pretty normal to start. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
April 17, 2014 - 11:55am | RE: cloning The clone will have average scores in Strength, Stamina, Reaction Speed, and Dexterity. It will have no Intuition, Logic, Personality, Leadership, or Special Abilities. A clone may be supplied with these abilities through an experiential matrix (giving the clone the scores recorded in the Matrix, see below). If a matrix is fed into a clone different from the person from whom the matrix was taken, the Strength, Dexterity, Reaction Speed, Personality, and Leadership scores are reduced by 20 points. No score may be reduced below a level of six in this case. Clones and cloning are illegal on some worlds. Cloning costs 1,000,000 credits and takes 500 days. Doing an Experiential Matrix costs 50,000 and takes a week. It would seem to me that Zeb Cook built some limitations into cloning and that he considered some of the possibile abuses of the technology. Thus one sign that someone is using a clone of someone else to do a crime is that the clone is going to be a poor shadow of its former personality with the built in -20 to STR, DEX, RS, PER, LDR. There would be some room for making a clone of someone else and uploading your matrix to it so that you could perform a crime. Of course the crime would have to be worth the cost of growing a clone and doing a matrix. Could easily see a rich mega corp exec having a clone made so that he could harvest the internal organs for transplantation. or upload his matrix and let his body die. This tech means immortality for the ultra rich (CEOs of mega corps certainly). after all the cost is only that of a HS 2 star ship and what mega corp CEO cant buy their own personal runnabout? One adventure idea is that the PC was killed and their saved matrix was uploaded to their clone. they have no knowledge of what happened since they made the matrix so they need to investigate how they were killed. Or you could go the "Heaven Can Wait" route where the matrix of one person was uploaded to another person's body and they are trying to figure out how and why they were killed. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 17, 2014 - 12:30pm | Wondering if the character had been very high level then the reduction in cloning would only mean a reset back to 1st level. Of course if they get to keep their skills they may finally live long enough to get level one in a Knight Hawks skill. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
April 17, 2014 - 9:05pm | I’ve been thinking of waking up on a starship with cannibals and I keep running into a no win scenario for the characters because they fight off the cannibals to end up on a derelict ship and take their place or die sooner of starvation. I keep puzzling about how to get the characters off the ship when the cannibals couldn't. Another angle I keep gravitating to is the symbiote mentioned in zeb's that attaches to the back and made see-through apparel so popular. What if some of the first class passengers were infected by symbiotes? They can't be sleepers as the symbiotes would be discovered by the cryo-techs. The ship is attacked by pirates and the crew is killed. The pirates leave the ship in deep space with a plan to ransom the passengers. However, before they can announce the ransoms and take credit for the missing ship they either get attacked by rivals and killed, suffer an accident on their ship, or turn against each other and thus delay using the hostages for a very long time. Anyway, they end up not caring or being able to care about the hostages. While waiting out their imprisonment the symbiote hostages degrade to symbiote survival mode. The symbiotes turn to killing the other passengers to keep themselves alive. After they finish off all the wake hostages they turn to the freezers. Also the symbiotes and their hosts are not knowledgeable enough to restart the ship or use the communications. Eventually the symbiotes wake a hostage that succeeds in getting away long enough to get into a secure location (bridge, engineering, etc) and hide from the symbiotes. From this secure location the hostage accesses the computers and searches the roster of storage class passengers for beings who could help him. The hostage wakes the players but is by then suffering from starvation and dies when the symbiotes catch him away from his secure location implementing the players escape. The players arrive to rescue the hostage just moments too late and meet the deranged symbiotes for the first encounter. -iggy |
April 25, 2014 - 4:48am | Re: cannibals and getting off ship: it could be that it wasnt that the cannibles couldnt get off ship but rather wouldn't OR its just one deranged individual. Since the PCs will be at a disadvantage having just woke up and the deranged NPC should, in theory, be holding better cards I guess just one cannibal is enough. Imagine it being a dralasite and the weaponless PCs tackling him and restraining him but he simply starts the process of trying to engulf the hands that are restraining him in a deranged attemt to eat those hands even while they're still attached to their owners. Thus the PCs may figure a way of the ship that the deranged dral never figured or simply never chose. You still have the creepy situation of the PCs being on the menu and about to have been served up one at a time. Depending on the group you could even have a live NPC strapped to a table with arms and legs amputated and eaten (dral had med skill) and begging the PCs to kill him to give the players a moral dilema (if your group is into Shadowrun style games or that sort of thing) . I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 25, 2014 - 11:34am | Waiter could you tell me the special. Yes sir we have a lovely Yazirian liver served with fatha beans, Human lady finger sandwiches, Vrusk chitin soup and for dessert a lovely Dralasite pudding. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
April 25, 2014 - 11:50am | Waiter could you tell me the special. Yes sir we have a lovely Yazirian liver served with fatha beans, Human lady finger sandwiches, Vrusk chitin soup and for dessert a lovely Dralasite pudding. or was that vrusk casino in a half shell? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 25, 2014 - 12:02pm | Ok hows this for the wacko cannibals angle. The hijackers are doomsday fanatics that parked thee ship next to the Ebony Eyes and are eating the passangers as they wait for the ship to slip through the "gateway to the great beyond". The passangers need to be eaten as a method to get them to take the journey that they wouldn't take as pool unbelievers. -iggy |
April 25, 2014 - 1:06pm | Ok hows this for the wacko cannibals angle. The hijackers are doomsday fanatics that parked thee ship next to the Ebony Eyes and are eating the passangers as they wait for the ship to slip through the "gateway to the great beyond". The passangers need to be eaten as a method to get them to take the journey that they wouldn't take as pool unbelievers. PCs must deal with 1)cannibles 2) black holes pulling them in 3) ships that are not working [sathar are known to show up here so they could do that as well] What if one ship is a science ship sent here to study the black holes but it was swarmed by the wackos. One ship would be the military escort of the science ship and the third would be a passenger liner that booked passage to see the ebony eyes. the wacko cult group all bought tickets to the ebony eyes tour and sprung their move to take control of the ship upon arrival, the military escort didn't know what had happened but had docked with the passenger ship under the ruse of an emergency (medical?) and the military crew were swarmed under (likely because it was a small ship like an assault scout). the military ship was then used to capture the science vessel.) astrogation equipment is destroyed to prevent any ship from returning to the Frontier (PCs may be able to cobble toether instruments for this on the science vessel. The wacko's will truly be the inmates running the asylum in a made orgie of flesh eating and wearing the skins of victims. maybe a little "Reaver-ish" ala Firefly. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
